Monetizing My Website

I’ve been spending most of my time lately researching how to monetize my online contest, www.SmartestofUS.com . Originally I had thought I could charge and entry fee and use the entry fee to finance the prize. With 3,000 daily contestants and an entry fee of $10.00 I would be able to generate a prize purse of over a million dollars. In a conversation with my lawyer about the rules of the contest she informed me that based on her experience I would need an exit clause in the rules to get me out of the obligation of the prize money. She went on to explain that in her years or experience she had never seen an online contest produce the results I would need to make my contest successful and profitable. This was contrary to all the input that I had received from the web designers, the advertising agencies, and the programmers that I had been working with for the prior two months.

As I look back I’m not sure they were misleading me or I was just hearing what I wanted to hear. I’m thankful that my lawyer was straight with me and opened my eyes before I went through the internet minefield I was preparing to enter.

So here I am with a contest written and ready to be put on line to drive traffic to my primary site www.BestofUS.com . Google search led me to http://www.quantcast.com, a site that provides a demographic analysis of 80% of the sites on the internet. I then searched for sites that offered IQ tests on the internet and found that the top listed site, IQtest.com, had average daily traffic of over 10,000 U.S. visitors. Further research on www.alexia.com confirmed the daily traffic as well as gave me a list of all the links that tied to IQtest.com. With this information I'm armed with what I need to do to equal or exceed the traffic achieved by IQ. I’ll use Elance.com to find a firm to do my SEO putting www.SmartestofUS.com in the number one position on Google, Yahoo and MSN. I’ve brought the prize down to and Apple MaxBook thus bringing the cost of the prize down to a manageable amount. I’ll personally fund the kickoff PR and advertising campaigns. IQ doesn’t advertise and doesn’t offer a prize so with these two additional features and a better layout I should be able to exceed IQ’s traffic.

My task now is to monetize the site through advertising (pay per view, pay per click, and co registration). I’ll also build a full Personal IQ Analysis which I can sell for $10.00 and offer other Smartest of U.S. merchandise which will supplement the advertising revenue.

My next task is to get the site up and running, plug in the ad revenue and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.